Surface imaging of the human body

An optical surface scanner was used to digitize and model the torso of an adult female. This 3D surface scanner employs structured light and has an acquisition time of less than one second for a 0.4 × 0.4 × 0.4 meter sample volume. A female volunteer was digitized in three parts using this surface scanner: head, upper torso, and lower torso. External fiducials were used to aid in registration of the three data sets to create a complete body surface model. The fiducial point loci were sampled and entered in a least squares optimization scheme to rigidly transform (rotate and translate) the three data sets into alignment. The digitized data of each scan was converted into spline surfaces and imported into a computer graphics surface modeling package (Studio, Alias Research, Inc. Toronto, Canada). The results demonstrate whole body surface modeling with an optical surface scanner to achieve rapid complex 3D surface coverage.